Dante Part 6

[Footnote 54: _Purgatorio_, i. 1-6.]

[Footnote 55: _Purgatorio_, xix. 76, 77.]

[Footnote 56: _Ibid._ v. 55-57.]

[Footnote 57: _Purgatorio_, xxvi. 13-15, 81; xxvii. 49-51.]

[Footnote 58: _Purgatorio_, xii. 112, 113.]

[Footnote 59: Canzone xv. 'Amor, che nella mente.' See also _Convito_, trat. iii.]

[Footnote 60: _Purgatorio_, i. ii.]

[Footnote 61: _Ibid._ iv. 37-95.]

[Footnote 62: _Purgatorio_, iii. 112-145, iv. 127-135.]

[Footnote 63: _Purgatorio_, ix. 76-129.]

[Footnote 64: For the general scheme of Purgatory, see _Purgatorio_, xvii. 91-139.]

[Footnote 65: _Purgatorio_, x. 130-139.]

[Footnote 66: _Ibid._ xiii. 73, 74, 133-138.]

[Footnote 67: _Purgatorio_, xxiii. 31.]

[Footnote 68: _Purgatorio_, xx. 124-151, xxi. 34-78.]

[Footnote 69: _Purgatorio_, v. 85-129, vi. 76-151, xiv. 16-72, xxiv.

82-87.]

[Footnote 70: _Ibid._ ix. 139-145.]

[Footnote 71: _Purgatorio_, xix. 103-114.]

[Footnote 72: _Purgatorio_, viii. 71, 72.]

[Footnote 73: _Ibid._ xxiii. 85-93.]

[Footnote 74: _Purgatorio_, xix. 7-33.]

[Footnote 75: _Purgatorio_, xxii. 55-73.]

[Footnote 76: _Purgatorio_, x.x.x. 22--x.x.xi. 90.]

V

HEAVEN

When Dante wrote the Paradise, he well knew that he was engaged in the supreme effort of his life, to which all else had led up. He well knew that he was engaged in no pastime, but with intensest concentration of matured power was delivering such a message from G.o.d to man as few indeed had ever been privileged or burdened to receive. He well knew that the words in which through long years of toil he had distilled the sweetness and the might of his vision were immortal, that to latest ages they would bear strength and purity of life, would teach the keen eye of the spirit to gaze into the uncreated light, and would flood the soul with a joy deeper than all unrest or sorrow, with a glory that no gloom could ever dispel. He knew moreover that this his last and greatest poem would speak to a few only in any generation, though speaking to those few with a voice of transforming power and grace.

'Oh, ye,' he cries almost at the beginning of the Paradise, 'who, desirous to hear, have followed in slight bark behind my keel, which sings upon its course, now turn you back and make for your own sh.o.r.es, trust not the open wave lest, losing me, ye should be left bewildered.

As yet all untracked is the wave I sail. Minerva breathes, Apollo leads me on, and the nine Muses point me to the pole. Ye other few, who timely have lift up your heads for bread of angels fed by which man liveth but can never surfeit know, well may ye launch upon the ocean deep, keeping my furrow as ye cut your way through waters that return and equal lie.'[77]

In these last words, comparing the track he leaves to the watery furrow that at once subsides, Dante seems to indicate that he was well aware how easily the soul might drop out of his verses, how the things he had to say were essentially unutterable, so that his words could at best be only a suggestion of his meaning dependent for their effect upon the subtlest spiritual influences and adjustments, as well as upon the receptive sympathy of those to whom they were addressed. And if there are so many that fail to catch the spirit and feel the heavenly harmony of the music when it is Dante's own hand that touches the strings, how hopeless seems the task of transferring even its echo, by translated extracts, or descriptions, from which the soul has fled.

There is indeed much that is beautiful, much that is profound, in the Paradise which is capable of easy reproduction, but the divine aroma of the whole could only be translated or transferred by another Dante.

Petal after petal of the rose of Paradise may be described or copied, but the heavenly perfume that they breathed is gone.

'His glory that moves all things,' so Dante begins the Paradise, 'pierces the universe; and is here more, here less resplendent. In that Heaven which of His light has most, was I. There I saw things which he who thence descends has not the knowledge or power to retell. For as it draws anigh to its desire, our intellect pierces so deep that memory cannot follow in its track. But of that sacred empire so much as I had power in my mind to store, shall now be matter of my poesy.'[78]

And again, almost at the close he sings, 'As is he who dreams, and when the dream is broke still feels the emotion stamped upon his heart though all he saw is fled beyond recall, e'en such am I; for, all the vision gone well-nigh without a trace, yet does the sweetness that was born of it still drop within my heart.'[79]

If so much as an echo of that echo, if so much as a dream of that dream, falls upon our ears and sinks into our hearts, then we are amongst those few for whom Dante wrote his last and his divinest poem.

Through the successive heavens of Paradise Dante is conducted by Beatrice; and here again the intimate blending in the divine guide of two distinct almost contradictory conceptions forms one of the great obstacles towards giving an intelligible account of the poem. This obstacle can only disappear when patient study guided by receptive sympathy has led us truly into the poet's thought.

In the Paradise, however, the allegorical and abstract element in the conception of Beatrice is generally the ruling one. She is the impersonation of Divine Philosophy, under whose guidance the spiritual discernment is so quickened and the moral perceptions so purified, that the intellect can thread its way through subtlest intricacies of casuistry and theology, and where the intellect fails the eye of faith still sees.

Even in this allegorical character Beatrice is a veritable personality, as are Lucia, the Divine Grace, and the other attributes or agents of the Deity, who appear in the Comedy as personal beings with personal affections and feelings, though at the same time representing abstract ideas. Thus Beatrice, as Divine Philosophy impersonated, is at once an abstraction and a personality. 'The eyes of Philosophy,' says Dante elsewhere, 'are her demonstrations, the smile of Philosophy her persuasions.'[80] And this mystic significance must never be lost sight of when we read of Beatrice's eyes kindling with an ever brighter glow and her smile beaming through them with a diviner sweetness as she ascends through heaven after heaven ever nearer to the presence of G.o.d.

The demonstrations of Divine Philosophy become more piercing, more joyous, more triumphant, her persuasions more soul-subduing and entrancing, as the spirit draws nearer to its source.

But though we shall never understand the Paradise unless we perceive the allegorical significance and appropriateness not only of the general conception of Beatrice, but also of many details in Dante's descriptions of her, yet we should be equally far from the truth if we imagined her a mere allegory. She is a glorified and as it were divine _personality_, and watches over and guides her pupil with the tenderness and love of a gentle and patient mother. The poet constantly likens himself to a wayward, a delirious, or a frightened child, as he flies for refuge to his blessed guide's maternal care.[81]

Again, they are in the eighth heaven, and Beatrice knows that a glorious manifestation of saints and angels is soon to be vouchsafed to Dante. Listen to his description of her as she stands waiting: 'E'en as a bird amongst the leaves she loves, brooding upon the nest of her sweet young throughout the night wherein all things are hid, foreruns the time to see their loved aspect and find them food, wherein her heavy toil is sweet to her, there on the open spray, waiting with yearning longing for the sun, fixedly gazing till the morn shall rise; so did she stand erect, her eyes intent on the meridian. And seeing her suspended in such longing I became as one who yearns for what he knows not, and who rests in hope.'[82]

Under Beatrice's guidance, then, Dante ascends through the nine heavens into the empyrean heights of Paradise. Here in reality are the souls of all the blessed, rejoicing in the immediate presence and light of G.o.d,[83] and here Dante sees them in the glorified forms which they will wear after the resurrection. But in order to bring home to his human understanding the varied grades of merit and beat.i.tude in Paradise, he meets or appears to meet the souls of the departed in the successive heavens through which he pa.s.ses, sweeping with the spheres in wider and ever wider arc, as he rises towards the eternal rest by which all other things are moved.

It is in these successive heavens that Dante converses with the souls of the blessed. In the lower spheres they appear to him in a kind of faint bodily form like the reflections cast by gla.s.s unsilvered; but in the higher spheres they are like gems of glowing light, like stars that blaze into sight or fade away in the depths of the sky; and these living topaz and ruby lights, like the morning stars that sing together in Job, break into strains of ineffable praise and joy as they glow upon their way in rhythmic measure both of voice and movement.

Thus in the fourth Heaven, the Heaven of the Sun, Dante meets the souls of the great doctors of the Church. Thomas Aquinas is there, and Albertus Magnus and the Venerable Bede and many more. A circle of these glorious lights is s.h.i.+ning round Dante and Beatrice as Aquinas tells the poet who they were on earth. 'Then like the horologue, that summons us, what hour the spouse of G.o.d rises to sing her matins to her spouse, to win his love, wherein each part urges and draws its fellow, making a tinkling sound of so sweet note that the well-ordered spirit swells with love: so did I see the glorious wheel revolve, and render voice to voice in melody and sweetness such as ne'er could noted be save where joy stretches to eternity.

'Oh, senseless care of mortals! Ah, how false the thoughts that urge thee in thy downward flight! One was pursuing law, and medicine one, another hunting after priesthood, and a fourth would rule by force or fraud; one toiled in robbery, and one in civil business, and a third was moiling in the pleasures of the flesh all surfeit-weary, and a fourth surrendered him to sloth. And I the while, released from all these things, thus gloriously with Beatrice was received in Heaven.'[84]

When Beatrice fixes her eyes--remember their allegorical significance as the demonstrations of Divine philosophy--upon the light of G.o.d, and Dante gazes upon them, then quick as thought and without sense of motion, the two arise into a higher heaven, like the arrow that finds its mark while yet the bow-string trembles; and Dante knows by the kindling beauty that glows in his guardian's eyes that they are nearer to the presence of G.o.d and are sweeping Heaven in a wider arc.

The spirits in the higher heavens see G.o.d with clearer vision, and therefore love Him with more burning love, and rejoice with a fuller joy in His presence than those in the lower spheres. Yet these too rest in perfect peace and oneness with G.o.d's will.

In the Heaven of the Moon, for instance, the lowest of all, Dante meets Piccarda. She was the sister of Forese, whom we saw in the highest circle but one of Purgatory, raised so far by his widowed Nella's prayers. When Dante recognises her amongst her companions, in her transfigured beauty, he says, '"But tell me, ye whose blessedness is here, do ye desire a more lofty place, to see more and to be more loved by G.o.d?" She with those other shades first gently smiled, then answered me so joyous that she seemed to glow with love's first flame, "Brother, the power of love so lulls our will, it makes us long for nought but what we have, and feel no other thirst. If we should wish to be exalted more, our wish would be discordant with His will who here a.s.signed us; and that may not be within these spheres, as thou thyself mayst see, knowing that here we needs must dwell in love, and thinking what love is. Nay, 'tis inherent in this blessedness to hold ourselves within the will Divine, whereby our wills are one. That we should be thus rank by rank throughout this realm ordained, rejoices all the realm e'en as its King, who draws our wills in His. And His decree is our peace. It is that sea to which all things are moved which it creates and all that nature forges." Then was it clear to me how every where in Heaven is Paradise, e'en though the grace distil not in one mode from that Chief Good.'[85]